ED grills former J&K minister Lal Singh in RB Educational Trust ‘money laundering’ case, 2nd time in 3 days

He reached the ED office around 10 am Monday along with his supporters including his wife Kanta Andotra, who is a former MLA. While he went inside, his supporters held a sit-in outside the ED office raising slogans against the BJP government at the Centre.

Significantly, Lal Singh’s questioning came 20 days after the ED had searched his premises at Kathua last month and later given him a written ‘panchnama’ saying, “no incriminating records and assets were found and accordingly a Nil Panchnama is drawn”. “However, during the course of the search, the statement of Lal Singh was recorded under Section 17 of PMLA, 2002,” it added.

The next day on October 18, his wife Kanta Andotra, an ex-MLA from Basohli, was called to the ED office and questioned about the land in possession of RB Educational Trust at Rajbagh in Kathua district.

“It is only political witch-hunting ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as the BJP knows that in the absence of Singh’s support, it cannot win from Udhampur-Kathua parliamentary constituency,” alleged Lal Singh’s wife Kanta Andotra. “Having done nothing for the people, they are now scared of the coming Lok Sabha elections and that is why they are using agencies like ED and CBI to frame their political opponents,” she said, adding that her husband has nothing to do with RB Educational Trust which is under the scanner of the ED and the CBI. The Trust was being headed by her as chairperson, she pointed out.

Lal Singh had been a two-time Lok Sabha member from Udhampur-Kathua parliamentary constituency and a three-time MLA from Basohli.

The last time, he was elected MLA during the 2014 assembly elections as a BJP nominee after he had quit the Congress and joined the saffron organisation. He was later inducted as a cabinet minister in the PDP-BJP coalition government first headed by then chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and later by his daughter Mehbooba Mufti. He was made to resign as a cabinet minister in 2018 after he publicly supported the demand for a CBI probe by the family members and relatives of the accused arrested by the police on charges of gang rape and subsequent murder of a minor Bakerwal girl in the forests of Rasana in Kathua district.

Later, he floated his own party, Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan, and even contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from both the Jammu-Poonch and Udhampur-Kathua constituencies, but lost in both places.

The CBI, too, had registered an FIR against RB Educational Trust and conducted searches at the premises of nearly half a dozen serving and retired revenue officials three years ago, for helping it acquire a huge tract of land over and above the ceiling of standard 100 kanal (12.5 acre) fixed by the J&K Government under provisions of the J&K Agrarian Reforms Act, 1976.

The CBI filed a chargesheet in the case in October 2021, alleging the involvement of revenue officials in criminal conspiracy with RB Educational Trust through Kanta Andotra to allow the Trust retain land beyond the permissible ceiling of standard 100 kanal (12.5 acre).

However, the CBI Court in Jammu in April this year directed reinvestigation in the matter, observing that “in the absence of any order under Section 14 of the Agrarian Reforms Act, it cannot be said that person who is guilty of holding land in excess of the ceiling area has committed an offence under the ordinary penal or special provisions.”